


The Question of the Better Setter

by Stylin_Breeze



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Exclusion, Gen, Kitagawa Daiichi, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25097866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stylin_Breeze/pseuds/Stylin_Breeze
Summary: Kageyama arrives for practice at Oikawa's instigation, only to find the gym empty.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime & Kageyama Tobio
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797484
Comments: 15
Kudos: 109
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	The Question of the Better Setter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lojo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lojo/gifts).



> For Bad Things Happen Bingo. See the endnotes for instructions on how to request a prompt yourself!
> 
> This prompt was "Exclusion/Rejection" for OiKage, although it mostly turned into IwaKage hurt/comfort.

Kageyama hustled to Kitagawa Middle School in his sea blue club uniform. It was July 20th, the first day of summer break, but Oikawa told him at their last practice that the team would meet today anyway.

The lad skipped into the quiet courtyard. He circled around to the gym, a light gust hurling a momentary dust devil that magnified how eerily empty the grounds were. He spotted the chain looped through the door handles refusing access to the gym. Kageyama peered through the windows; sure enough, no one else had arrived yet.

No matter. Tobio figured he got the time wrong and would just wait for the rest to show up.

At the Oikawa household, July 20th was team captain and setter Tooru Oikawa’s birthday, and there the rest of the club were celebrating.

“Where’s Kageyama?” Iwaizumi questioned the birthday boy when he realized one club member proved conspicuously absent.

“Oh, him?” Oikawa beamed, pretending to be surprised. “I figured my awkward kouhai would want to play volleyball instead, so I told him to go practice at school….”

Kageyama loitered on the gym steps, awaiting his ever-tardier teammates. Finally resolving not to let the solitude become a total waste, he pulled a volleyball from his kit and began to toss it for himself skyward.

With each flick of the ball, he set it higher and higher, daring himself not to lose track of it as its arc whiffled more with height.

A gust pushed a too-high ball behind Tobio. At first, Kageyama complacently felt content to let his teammates spike it. Nearly too late did he remember he was alone and sprinted to save the point.

Dashing as hard as he could, he barely managed to catch the volleyball before it touched the ground.

In that moment, the thought of having no one there to spike a ball struck him as the most terrifying possibility ever….

“How long have you been here?”

Kageyama looked up. In fact, someone was there.

“Iwaizumi? Is everyone else almost here? Are we going in?” said Tobio getting on his feet. At that, Hajime realized the depths of Oikawa’s depravity.

“I would, but I left my key at home,” he fibbed and searched for a way to endear himself. “Hey. Want to talk?”

The two sat on the gym steps on the deserted campus, Kageyama peering mournfully at the ground, Iwaizumi casually observing the sky, wondering how to appease the young boy’s evident melancholy.

Kageyama had actually figured it out awhile ago. He’d overheard gossip about Oikawa’s party today; and when Oikawa mentioned practice, Tobio rationalized that the celebration must be afterward. Even so, he was acutely aware that he himself hadn’t been invited and never shook the niggling suspicion that ensued.

“Does Oikawa hate me?”

Hajime knew right away this wasn’t an isolated thought but an idea that had circled in the boy’s head for some time. The first year, in his short stint at Kitagawa, had already sensed the senior setter’s reticence encroaching on hostility.

Hajime let the question float on the air for several moments while he mulled a reply.

“No,” he said at last. “He recognizes what you can do, how good of a player you are.” _And he’s afraid of that_ , he wanted to add but bit his tongue.

“Really? But Oikawa is so good.”

Iwaizumi found himself surprised by the innocent praise. This young boy didn’t deserve to be treated so callously by someone he professed to look up to.

Hajime moved to change the subject. “Shall we do a few tosses?”

Soon, Hajime thought he knew what about Kageyama made Oikawa vent so much. Tobio’s tosses _were_ good. All of them. Invariably so. Consistently so. Perfectly so. They lacked the dogged finetuning for the hitter that each of Tooru’s sets had, but Iwaizumi did sense the deep drive to do everything the best in the young lad’s core.

More than anything, Hajime feared that most people on the receiving end of these tosses might not perceive that dedication—if not misinterpret it entirely.

They continued until it was late. Hajime peeked at the phone he’d left on the steps, spying a notif from Tooru:

“IWA-CHAN!!! I thought you were making a really stinky poop!!! WHERE ARE YOU???????”

Iwaizumi slipped the device in his pocket.

“How ’bout I walk you home?” he offered Kageyama.

“Shouldn’t you be at Oikawa’s party?” Tobio dared to explicitly ask for the first time that eve.

Iwaizumi smiled. “He’s fine without me.”

Even so, Tobio insisted and embarked on his own.

Once alone, Iwaizumi sighed and thumbed a reply to his melodramatic peer.

“I got tired of your trashiness,” he sent, with full intent to ignore any responses for at least the next few minutes.

As Kageyama’s form faded into the horizon, Iwaizumi for a moment dreaded the day Tobio Kageyama would come into his own and they face each other on opposite sides of the net.

**Author's Note:**

> Go to my [tumblr](https://stylinbreeze60.tumblr.com/post/621269744283222016/stylinbreeze60-join-the-stylin-breeze-edition) to see the open prompts! (Note that "sleep deprivation" is also taken in addition to the ones pictured and in the text.)
> 
> You don't have to be on tumblr to request, and requests can be made via any avenue you choose to contact me by.


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